


The Sin of Man

by FanficsbyVe



Category: Dark Souls III
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-04
Updated: 2018-06-04
Packaged: 2019-05-17 23:47:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14841521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FanficsbyVe/pseuds/FanficsbyVe
Summary: A short backstory of Halflight, Spear of the Church and missionary from Oolacile. One-shot.





	The Sin of Man

**Author's Note:**

> A few people wanted to see more of Halflight. This story has been in development hell of a long time, but I hope you can still get some enjoyment out of it. It's the result of me reading a lot of Lovecraft and working with tiny amounts of lore. XD

Strange things were afoot in the chasms that were hidden deep underneath Oolacile.

That was all Halflight knew, all his superiors cared to tell him as he was sent to investigate these ancient, abandoned catacombs. They saw no need to give any further details. As far as they were concerned, the tales that had come to them were largely exaggerated and it would take but one of their own to shine a light on it and put the matter to rest.

The man himself was inclined to think the same. Despite being a missionary, a devout man of worship, he was not one to easily be taken by stories of the cryptic and the bizarre. He supposed that wasn’t so strange when one’s Gods were flesh and living amongst their subjects. Such a thing made it easy to have faith, yet it also instilled in him a deep-sated need for proof of any claim made.

As such, proof was what he was currently after. His mission was simple. He’d enter the catacombs and look for any signs that supported, or preferably disproved, the tales his fellow countrymen had laid before the council. Then, he would report back to them and they would decide either what had to be done or whether the matter could be dismissed entirely.

Seeing the nature of these stories, he heavily suspected the latter. The reports were impossibly queer, to say the least. They talked of a darkness no lack of sun or moon could possibly create, a spreading and creeping blackness that made the blood run cold. An antithesis of the Flame in its deepest, most hideous form and at the heart of it, a monstrosity.

Accounts of the creature varied. Most claimed it was a demon of some form. Others seemed to think it was an unknown animal. There were even a few who insisted that what lurked there was in fact a man. All of those sounded equally absurd to Halflight and if anything, it only raised his curiosity and interest. When presented with a fantastical notion, one couldn’t help but wonder what they would find.

It took him but a day’s travel from the capitol to reach the entrance to the caverns. He slipped into them fearlessly, unperturbed by the immense dark that greeted him. In a pinch, he casted a light and with his talisman in one hand and a catalyst in the other, he started his descent.

At first glance, nothing struck him as particularly odd in these caves. They were dark, but not any more so than any other place that naturally went without sunlight. They were filled with vegetation, mosses and other types of fungi that thrived in lightless crevices, and he swore he could see the beady eyes of nocturnal creatures reflect against his magical light. The sight encouraged him and he readily proceeded.

From his satchel, he pulled some parchment and a piece of charcoal. Using the light he created, he jotted down some quick notes about the state of the cave as he walked. There wasn’t anything strange so far, but he had hardly started his exploration and he wanted to be certain he didn’t forget any important details. 

Contrary to some of his kind, Halflight had never objected to some of the dirtier investigations people of his rank sometimes had to perform. While some longed to taste the greatness and splendor of Anor Londo, there where they were least needed, he always enjoyed walking the unbeaten path. There was a thrill in discovery, in going where no one had gone before and to be the one to pull pearls from what others might consider muck. These caves were no different to him and the supposed mystery they now offered demanded to be solved.

As he descended further into the depths, the state of normalcy remained. It was somewhat darker now, but vegetation was still plentiful and wildlife could be spied aplenty. If anything, it grew more diverse and alien now, as he caught sight of the eyeless lifeforms that had adapted so well to this hostile environment. Most of them scurried away once he shone his light in their direction, but didn’t seem more hostile or skittish than was common for their kind. 

The missionary recorded everything he saw and for the next few hours, he found himself moving ever further into the tunnels. Every once in a while, he would stop to take notes or rest and sometimes, he simply paused to take in the environment or get his bearings. Every time, he felt a multitude of interesting things staring back at him, yet none struck him as the kind explorers hadn’t uncovered long before him.

By now, he was becoming accustomed to the cold and the dark and with it, any sense of peril he suspected gradually diminished. After all, he’d been assessing these natural ruins for a good while now and so far, he’d spied nothing out of the ordinary. If anything, his travels to the more civilized lands surrounding Lordran had been far more peculiar than anything he was witnessing here.

It was only several hours later, going deeper and deeper into the caves, that he spotted it. A strange patch of black amidst the darkness. The fact it stood out at all among the all-enveloping blackness was strange and he walked over, casting his light across the area to investigate it. He reached out inquisitively, only to suddenly freeze halfway through the movement. 

Without consciously wanting to, his entire body tensed up. For a second, it almost seemed to turn to stone before it practically started screaming at him to back away. It seemed to respond to the black puddle before his mind could and every little fiber of his being told him that under no circumstances should he touch it. 

That instinctive notion finally brought him to truly examine the thing that was before him. The small blotch was darker than the blackest ink and an inexplicable cold seemed to radiate off it, causing his skin to break out in goosebumps. Yet the unpleasant chill didn’t get to him so much as the fact that the strange, thick substance seemed to be pulsating. Almost as if it were alive. Alive and hungry. 

It was that realization that finally had him back away. A sliver of fear settled in the deepest pit of his stomach, upsetting the faint comfort he had felt until then. How he knew, he could not tell, but in that instant, he sensed that whatever caused that stain of black to be here would spell out a nightmare.

The more animalistic part of his being told him to turn back. To move away from this place, retrace the steps that led him this far and make his way back. To simply accept this mere hint that there was evil hiding in these natural catacombs and go back up to the sunlight, warn others of this danger and seal these depths off forever.

And yet, his mind asked him, how would he manage that?

Just how did he know that what these caves held was evil? After all, it was only a fleeting sentiment in his head, a brief twist in his gut, brought on by looking at something unknown. If he would turn back now, if he would turn around and retreat to the surface, how could he indeed convince others that there was a nightmare lurking in these depths? What evidence did he have to ensure his words were not considered as cowardice?

No matter how long he searched his mind, he could not think of anything. He dared not touch the darkness as it lay there pulsing on the ground, at least not without some proper way to handle and transport it. The mere sight of it made his skin crawl, yet he could not think of any way to convey his revulsion and terror to anyone with mere words. Some types of fear could only be tasted firsthand and he had not found anything that could convey an appropriate sense of dread in description alone.

It was there that he stood at a crossroads and for once, his id and superego tore him in two different directions. His common sense implored him to go back. His faith caused him to move forward. The latter had always been what guided him.

Thus, he proceeded. Step by step, he would continue to ascend into the darkness. It enveloped him from all sides and even though he summoned a light to guide him, he could not help but feel like he was going down the throat of a terrible and ferocious beast. 

The depths grew darker with every step he took. The air was gradually becoming frigid, freezing his breath as it went past his lips, biting into his skin. It was colder than the coldest winter, invisible ice biting into his skin. Yet it wasn’t the cold that got to him as much as it was that deep and oppressive blackness, that seemed to gnaw at his very mind the longer he pressed on.

There was no life in these caves now. No animals, no plants, not even fungus or any other organism too small to see with the eye. He could call it ‘death’ if he didn’t know better, but that would be false. There was no death in these caves. There was…something, yet it was far too twisted to even be called life.

The blackness was still there. Pulsing and poised, watching and waiting. He could hear it call out to him from crevices and crannies. It spoke of violation and twisted promises, of a dark secret none should be privy to. It was staring him down, like a predator stalking its prey, thriving on its fear and awareness, and the further he went, the thicker it became. 

That little bit of unnatural blackness was no longer an errand splotch here. Instead, it was now spreading, expanding. It was blanketing every little corner of this place, infecting it like a terrible disease. It was an illness, born from a source he couldn’t even begin to comprehend and even though he was careful not to touch any afflicted area, he could almost feel it reach out to him and close its cold inhuman fingers around his throat.

Again, the animal in him urged him to run. To turn back, to run from the lion’s den while he still could. Yet there was once again his duty pulling him forward, whispering to thrust in the Flame and let it guide him, telling him that his work was not yet done until this evil was vanquished. 

It was there, within the very infected heart of this corrupted place, that he first heard it. A scream. Or at least, something with only the vaguest semblance to it. Even so, there were human emotions in it. Fear. Confusion. Grief. Hunger. Anger. Whatever emitted that scream felt most deeply and it was perhaps his own humanity that compelled Halflight forward to at least see its owner. 

Thus he did, flinging himself through the darkness, guided by light yet stumbling. No longer knowing which way was up or down, right from wrong, his mind seemed to fill with the utter black surrounding him, drawing him to that impossible noise. Morbid, perverse curiosity was all that was left and the desire to know the unknown drove him further, until, at last, there was more than silence.

It took him a while to make out the shape. It was as dark as the dimness that permeated every inch of this place and just as animate. He could only vaguely make it out amongst the overwhelming nothingness that threatened to consume him from all sides. It almost suffocated him now, but once he shone a light, all breath was truly gone from him.

What he saw, in that impenetrable black, was a creature, unlike any he’d seen before. A writing mass of darkness, torn, mangled and corrupted. Every little part of it was a mess of fur and horns and twisted bones, lined with endless red eyes that peered around all in different directions. Its limbs were asymmetrical and distorted, one of them crowned with more undeveloped eyes and a hungry mouth and its very body seemed to feast upon the dark around it, drawing from the place it seemed so attuned with.

The very sight of this…thing made Halflight feel but like a child, one who saw the very monsters in the cupboard become flesh. He could not breathe, his blood turned solid and his skin was cold as the blackest ice. And yet…it wasn’t the inhumanity of the thing before him that instilled such terror in him. It was the terrifying notion that deep down, he knew it had actually been human once.

It was that cold and grim realization that forced movement into his heels. By a force not of his own mind, he ran. In that instant, the being noticed him and gave chase, the entire cave shaking around them as it moved its abominable body through the depths.

In those frightful moments, Halflight didn’t see or hear. The world around him was naught but a black blur as he ran, not knowing left from right or up from down as he fled across an undefined path. He could feel his knuckles creak as he clutched his catalyst, casting spells of light behind him to try and deter the creature, his mind racing.

He couldn’t let it get him. That…monster that was once man. He knew not why he was so certain of it, but it was the only truth standing out in his mind. It shouldn’t get him. It should not consume him. It should not touch him. It would all be over if it did.

Thus, he ran, rumbling and roaring ringing in his ears. He sprinted. He stumbled. He crawled. He hurled every spell, fueled by nothing but self-preservation and desperation. He hurried, dashed, tripped and crept just to see sunlight and safety once more, until he could finally do no more.

He didn’t know when or how he lost consciousness, but when he woke, he did so to rays of warmth, shining down on him through a window. He found himself wrapped in warm and fresh linen, with the watchful eyes of a healer upon him. It was in that moment that he knew he was safe, somehow, yet brief relief soon gave way to dread.

Even if the thing in the caves didn’t get him, it was still out there…and another might not be as fortunate as he was.

So he started talking, even before he demanded his caregiver to summon his superior. He spoke, fast and hurried, like he never did before, about what he had witnessed in those catacombs under the land. He tried to describe it, even though words barely did it justice to what he saw. The kind of terror he experienced could only be felt and despite spoken language failing him, he somehow sensed he could make others feel but an inkling of it too.

Indeed, the look in the eyes of his superior showed no skepticism or derision. Rather, it showed fear, however much he tried to hide it, and concern. Yet what’s more, Halflight swore he could see almost a glimmer of recognition and that unnerved him far more than anything else he could think of. Recognition and a word, muttered involuntarily, that sounded a lot like “Manus”.

It was that word, barely above a whisper, that had him sat up and take interest. He knew who Manus was. By the Gods, every child in Oolacile knew. Yet what did the Primeval Man, the Pygmy and Forebearer of Mankind, have to do with any of this? Answers eluded him, but one look at the man before him and he knew he could not simply let it go.

He had never been a man of intuition. After all, such a thing was the enemy of faith and missionaries had naught but their fate to guide them. Yet after what he had seen in those caves, this new sense of instinct refused to leave him alone and when looking upon his superior, it whispered something he didn’t much like to acknowledge.

The man knew something, something he refused to share with him.

That notion, however quaint it seemed, was what spurred him into action. With a newfound strength he didn’t know he possessed, he reached forward and grabbed a fistful of his superior’s robe, pulling him close. His face inches from the other man, his voice reduced to a growl, he let go of his enforced humility for the first time in his life and demanded answers. 

His superior raised his voice in protest, chastising him as he would an unruly child, but Halflight refused to have any of it. He called him out on his seeming understanding, on the immense fear he seemed to feel for something he had supposedly never seen before and on the mention of a being that seemed so irrelevant to it all. He reiterated all of the horrific things he had seen in that cave, that nearly threatened to take his very soul, and once again furiously pushed the man to spill what he knew, on pain of death if necessary. He screamed this, over and over, grabbing and clawing to him, until, at last, the man who was once his mentor relented.

The missionary would never forget the tale told to him there, in that healing house and on that bed. He’d never forget his mentor’s tears and the words that painted a picture of gruesome terror. A story of violation, all born from a desire for power and knowledge, in the cradle of humankind until it was left an abomination.

He could almost hear the digging of the shovels and the slicing of the knife as the elders and upper clergy of his country disturbed Manus from his rest and took pieces of him to consume. He could practically taste the blood and flesh at the vivid imagery, sense Manus’s pain as his body was desecrated by ritual cannibalization, his precious possessions taken away from him under the pretense of curiosity. He practically saw the black blood flowing from his mangled body, how it then twisted and transformed and flowed together with curses he uttered, swearing retribution of this crime, turning into the monster of the purest humanity and reaping upon his violators exactly what they sought.

By the end of the tale, all Halflight could do was laugh. Laugh hysterically to the point of crying, until he was weeping along with his superior. To know that what he had seen, what he had witnessed, was a human horror made by human hands… It was the world’s most twisted jest. A cruel joke, that unmasked the people he looked up to most as monsters no less than the one they had created. 

His laughter had then turned to scorn and fury, one he didn’t bother to hold back. Even as his mentor claimed remorse and begged him to pray for him, he had laughed off this key action of faith and asked what else the older man intended to do. What the elders of this country intended to do. They had created this stain upon Oolacile. If they truly cared about its people, it was their responsibility to undo it.

He should have already known the answer when his mentor said nothing and instead, left the room weeping. He should have figured it out as he was left there in the bed alone, with no comfort to ease the torment this new knowledge brought him. It was only in the morning that it truly become clear to him. When the bells of Oolacile’s capital tolled in the morning as they did when someone of the cloth died and his attendant told him that his mentor was dead. A sudden death, seemingly an accident where he fell from a great height, and that he, Halflight, was invited to the funeral, as he was deemed well enough to leave the healing house.

It told him everything he needed to know.

The missionary never attended the funeral. Instead, he had smiled at his caregiver and gone straight home. There, he had packed up what few possessions he still held dear and enough provisions for a few days. Then, he had slipped out of the city, kept walking until he was out of Oolacile and never looked back. 

Even now, within the bowels of the Ringed City, he wonders if the decision he made that faithful day was one of sense or cowardice. Whether he should have remained in his home country a little longer and at least warn his countrymen. Whether he should have tried and find a way to avert the horror threatening to creep out of the catacombs. Whether he should have stayed and perished with them, instead of running like he did.

He thought about all of these things more times than he cares to count. In the many centuries that he sought refuge out here, in the city where humanity began, he has contemplated every possibility and decision. Every little way he could have done things differently. Even now, he wonders if there was a way he could have saved them all…

Still, every time he wonders about this, he comes to the same conclusion. It doesn’t matter. After all, he made his choice long ago. Oolacile is gone, swallowed up by the Abyss. His people were gone and their lands reduced to Abyss-stained ashes and he is here, alive. If even a knight like the great Artorias could not save it, what chance was there for something like him?

No, Halflight knew he chose his fate long ago. His duty to his long-dead homeland is done and all that remains is the shell of a life he still has here. He could not honor Gwyn as his countrymen did, but the least he can do is protect the slumber of Filianore, his last remaining heir. Perhaps, one day, she can undo all the mistakes his people committed under Gwyn and bring change. 

At least, that is what the man of faith in him likes to believe and he hates to admit that this man has been dying a slow death ever since the revelation about Manus. Since then, it ha made way for intuition. Intuition that tells him that even should Filianore awaken and take the throne, nothing would truly change. The Abyss would remain and even if the Flame would be alight anew, or a new one would spring, it would always be watching and waiting, to eventually swallow all of the earth.

As vile as it is to acknowledge it, sometimes Halflight thinks it would be better if it all ended. This wicked cycle of lighting the Flame, of fighting the Abyss. Perhaps it would be better if this was forgone entirely and replaced with something new. What, he doesn’t know, but he doesn’t doubt that others smarter and more learned to him are thinking about it. Once upon a time, he would have called them heretics and heathens. Now, he starts to wonder if they could perhaps be saviors. The saviors that he and his kind aspired to be but couldn’t.

He doesn’t know and there is a chance he never will. All he knows now is that he’s tired. Tired of running. Tired of living with regret. Tired of living in stagnation as the world goes dark and becomes light again and again while humanity suffers. There is nothing here for him anymore but a prolonging of regret and a facsimile of life and grandeur and he often wonders if it would be kinder to mankind to end it all. 

Still, he remains a missionary, a Spear of the Church who swore an oath. He will be here, mourning for an imperfect home he lost. Protecting a Goddess who will likely never wake. He will do his duty, as he has sworn to do all his life. He will live for others who rely on him, even if he is long past such desires for himself.

Yet while doing so, he holds out hope. Hope for something else beside the Flame and Darkness. Hope for a new order, even if he won’t be part of it. His intuition tells him that change will come, either weeks or centuries from now and when it does, he has decided he will not fight it. He will, at last, rest and be free from what happened in Oolacile for good.


End file.
